


In Your Arms

by KingJulienne



Series: Service Heroes AU [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, EMT Jean, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fear of Death, Firefighter Marco, Grieving, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Jean has a mild case of PTSD, Jean reluctantly consenting to quoting them with him, M/M, Marco quoting Disney Channel Movies, Marco tells bad jokes makes even worse references, Physical hurt, Temporary Secretary Jean, burn mention, death mention, dorks cuddling because it makes me feel better, dorks cuddling because it makes them feel better, fear of significant other's death, graphic description of burns, it ends fluffy i swear, panic mention, worry mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 07:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3126938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingJulienne/pseuds/KingJulienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dealing with death everyday, Jean knows he can't save everyone. Fighting fires and rescuing people for a living, Marco knows he's not Superman. But even with the trauma, the loss, and the pain, they know that they can recover when they lie down in each other's arms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Arms

Jean grieved the guy like he knew him.

“Jean?” Marco whispered.

Jean said nothing. Instead, he stared through the TV, one hand rubbing his arm where his father’s words: “Sometimes your best is all you can do, and that, my son, is more than enough” tattooed in readable, yet aesthetic lettering on his otherwise unmarked flesh. It was a constant reminder that he couldn’t do everything, or save everyone, but his best was enough.

Hands found his shoulder and the hand over his tattoo. Lips touched the top of his head and Jean wanted to sink back into the embrace but he was too heavy to move. He just closed his eyes, the back of his eyelids seared with the image of the person who died on his watch today.

“Who was it?” Marco whispered against his hair.

Jean’s eyes pricked with tears. He couldn’t say anything to that, either.

Or rather, he wanted to, but the words were caught in the knot of concern, hard and heavy in his gut. The rest of him trembled, putting the last face he ever wanted to see die on the corpse.

With a mouth like his, one would think he’d have a thousand words to say, that he could just rant: “Oh gosh, Marco, you should’ve seen the guy, the wounds were brutal, hideous.”

He usually did, and would get Marco’s comfort and chuckles around him. Jean saw a lot of death in his profession. He rushed to the injured, nurtured the injured so they survived the trip to the hospital, and occasionally, very rarely, Jean was more than proficient at his job, held the injured if they swore to hell and back, tears and snot streaming down their face (if they had the strength cry, or the time), they weren’t going to make it, and their families should be told that they, the dying loved them.

And Jean could handle it. He could comfort the dying and not get attached. The words on his arm had to be repeated more times today than they ever had when he started his job rushing the hurt to help.

“You were there, Marco,” Jean murmured. “You should know.”

Just saying it shook him, made Marco’s warmth around him run cold. Jean pictured the burned flesh, black and red and running with blood and puss, brown eyes searching Jean’s for a hope of survival as his burned hand grasped the front of Jean’s uniform, shaking Jean’s sturdy, non-squeamish foundation and rendering him into a place where he was doing everything in his power to save and soon after resurrect this man. Jean had lost his cool, he shouted Marco’s name at the dying man, begging him to live. Though confused, the man was too weak to correct him, too burned. He lost his fight, brown eyes loosing reflexivity and life as tears ran into his burned face and sizzled, and they weren’t the victim’s.

Though Jean showered the moment he threw himself through the door in an attempt to boil away the memory hours ago, Jean’s eyes still hurt, his forehead still hot from where he pressed against the dying man.

Marco sank and sighed against him. A welcome yet unwelcome weight. “Oh Jean.”

Jean knew he was being stupid. He didn’t need Marco to say it; that tone Marco took as he sighed was enough.

Marco drew away from him, and Jean bit his cheek, shifting on the sofa like he was something unclean. He should move to the floor; dirty things sat on the floor. A soft grunt and two dips on either side of Jean later and Marco shifted between the back of the sofa and his grieving partner. Jean grumbled a complaint, shifting forward so Marco still had his family jewels in functioning, not-flattened order after he slid into the space behind him.

Sliding his arms under Jean’s and around him, Marco hugged Jean back to his chest. Jean was too tired to move, too tired to stop shaking, too tired to stop the worry dripping from his eyes. Marco’s cheek caressed the back of his head as he settled on the sofa with him, his feet still on the seat and his bent legs forming walls of warm, protective Marco on either side of him.

Marco’s voice was quiet, but the loudest thing in the house.

“I’m always going to come home to you, Jean,” Marco said. He turned his lips and repeated himself against the back of Jean’s head.

Marco knew what to say to comfort him, but Jean always found ways of making it not work as well as it should’ve. “And if you don’t?” Jean whispered.

“I’ll still come home,” Marco said, sounding so sure, so certain. It confused him. Jean had the urge to challenge it. He believed Marco in most things; but this was different.

“I’ll be a ghost,” Marco added, a casual thing to suggest, “and haunt your couch.”

Jean huffed, rolling his head to the side. “So casual.” His face contorted in a smile that struggled not to be there. “And not the bed, or that ugly telephone you love so much?”

Marco gasped, insulted. “It’s vintage. It’s classy.”

“It’s old, the worst shade of red, and big enough to bust someone’s car window,” Jean said, his smile growing, his body relaxing. There was something about lying in Marco’s arms that brought him peace. Sure, the memory still lingered, but he was safe from it in Marco’s arms. Jean shifted further down the sofa so he could lay back more comfortably against Marco.

With a huff, Marco tucked Jean’s head under his chin, digging it in to the top of his skull. Jean winced. “I might haunt the phone just to annoy you. I’ll ring it and you’ll pick it up, and nobody will be there, and then as you go to hang up: ‘wow, rude.’”

Stronger than he had before, Jean laughed, pulling his leg up onto the sofa with them. He swayed his knee back and forth, tapping it against Marco’s leg to the ticking of the fireplace mantle’s clock.

“And I’d hang up anyway,” Jean told him.

“Wow, rude,” Marco said.

Jean chuckled, and Marco laughed with him. Jean sighed; he supposed Marco was too much of a dork to die on him, now wasn’t he?

“I’m getting a job in the hospital,” Jean determined. “Something boring. Like front desk.”

“You? A secretary?” Marco said, his hands grazing up and down Jean’s stomach. “I feel bad for incoming patients.”

“I’d be a bitchin’ secretary,” Jean said.

Marco held him closer. “The bitching part is a given, sugar.”

Jean smiled slyly, arching an eyebrow. “Oh sorry,” he said. “I meant a sexy bitch secretary.”

Marco hummed in interest, dropping one of his feet to the floor. “When’d you say you were getting this desk job again?”

Jean patted Marco’s thigh, putting his other foot on the coffee table with a smirk and a chuckle. “Down, tiger,” Jean said.

“You could at least get some practice, huh?” Marco said. “I’ve got a few things I wanna file, Mr. Kirschstein.”

“Mmm,” Jean hummed, his hand advocating a higher, more intimate position on Marco’s thigh. “I’ll take care of it right away, Mr. Bodt. Just tell me what you need.”

A brush of Marco’s lips along Jean’s cheek sent fire through his body and electricity down his spine, causing him to hum. “I think you know,” Marco assured him. “I brought it up yesterday, in our previous meeting.”

Jean grinned, turning to face Marco. He spoke against his lips, glad for the distraction, the warmth, the person that was Marco Bodt, and glad Jean had him and his attention.

“Then I guess I should get started,” Jean said. “That right, Mr. Bodt?”

…

 

Jean had to stop letting present Jean decide for future Jean. He ended up downright bored.

Like right now, during the crawling hours of the hospital just before time to clock out, and having folded his five hundredth paper crane after doctor Hanji had shown him how at lunch yesterday.

He’d been a month and a half at working the desk, filing, printing, scheduling appointments. If he developed anything from it, he strengthened his sarcasm levels, his pen stroke, figured out how to clear a paper jam, and learned how to fold paper cranes.

Marco was happy with it though; he said a Jean complaining was better than a Jean having watched someone die that day. And, Jean had to admit, if Marco was happy, so was he. The only thing that kept Jean sane was coming to work in one of Marco’s jackets, so he could snuggle into the warmth and security.

Banter entering the hospital drew Jean’s attention. Rare that a couple came in arguing about something, Jean found it amusing, to say the least.

Until he heard who was talking.

“You’re insane, Marco, you hear me? In! Sane!” a familiar voice—it could only belong to Sasha—said.

Jean looked up when he saw Sasha with her hands on her hips, ash mixing with sweat and her brow turned up in concern.

Oh no.

A smile strained Marco’s face and Jean narrowed his eyes, not trusting it, nor the way Marco waved Sasha off instead of saying something, as though he heard this for the thousandth time, striding ahead of her in a longer step precariously close to a stumble. Marco headed for the desk, for Jean.

Oh no.

“Marco?” Jean asked.

Marco smiled at him. Lovingly, as he located his jacket coating Jean’s body. Now that Marco was close enough, Jean pinned him with scrutiny. He detected the strain in his face, watched the sweat bead and slip down his brow. Breathed closer to his shattering point at the pain in Marco’s eyes.

The image of that firefighter before crept on him.

He wasted no time. “Where is it?” Jean whispered.

Marco’s eyes flickered with discomfort. He concealed it with love—no, optimism.

“Hey, sugar,” Marco said, sighing as he leaned forward, staggeringly so and pecked Jean on the lips. Jean met the kiss but backed up a step a moment after, his own brow twisting in concern. Marco’s eyebrows went up.

“Oh, damn,” Marco’s laugh wheezed; Marco never wheezed, “Did I have ash on my lips? Sorry, sugar-”

Before Jean could say a word, Sasha tackled the counter. “Good, you’re here,” she said. “Talk some sense into this idiot man thing of yours, please!”

Marco chuckled, his arm propped up on the counter steadying him. “It’s nothing,” Marco said, almost sang.

“It’s something,” Sasha sang back, aiming to jab his side, but thinking better of it.

Jean scowled at them, indecisive on whose ass needed kicking first for not telling him what was going on. He glared at Marco, obvious ring leader.

He said, “Marco, where is it-”

“You should’ve gotten in the car,” Sasha snapped.

“I got in a car, but not that car,” Marco informed her.

“But that other car,” Sasha said, emphasizing other, peeking at Jean, and quickly snapping her gaze back on Marco, “Would’ve gotten you here quicker, and safer!”

“I wanted to drive,” Marco said, shrugging one shoulder, stiffly.

“Marco!” Jean barked. Sasha leapt back, holding up her hands. Marco turned to him. Oh, he had the nerve. “Marco Bodt, I swear to god, I didn’t memorize every sign that someone is in pain from a burn injury back in medical school just to watch you bullshit and ‘hey sugar’ me about a wound!” Jean grabbed Marco by the front of his jacket and pulled him to the desk, glaring right into his eyes. “Where is it?”

Marco flinched, blinking. He staggered, screwing his eyes shut. “Jean-”

The other two secretaries behind the desk with him took his arms, reminding him that the next time he punched a patient he’d get suspended or fired, and tugged him away from Marco. Jean wrenched each arm free and snatched Marco back into his hands, by his face, his knee disrupting the paper cranes on his desk.

“Where is it, dammit?!” Jean hissed, eyes wide with panic.

Marco gulped, eyes wide. Jean saw that firefighter dying in his hands again. Jean shook Marco; he refused to lose him twice.

“Where is it?!” Jean insisted.

Marco picked up a hand, put it over his chest.

“Here,” he whispered, then fell out of Jean’s grip.

Marco went down, and Jean stared wide-eyed at the space between his soot stained hands as though he just murdered a man.

“Marco!”

Jean was over the desk and beside him in a second, tearing open the jacket, pulling up the shirt, gagging on his on tongue as he unearthed a nasty, horrid, stinking burn covering half his chest and torso. And Jean thought it was just the soot on his face and the smell of exertion before, but no.

Jean had so many questions but was without the breath to shout them.

How’d he get the burn in the first place? Why didn’t he let an ambulance take him in?

How long had Marco suffered the burn before he decided the stench of singed flesh had died down enough that he figured could come into the hospital to see Jean?

Marco disappeared from Jean’s line of sight as he was lifted up and lain on a stretcher and Jean prayed angels didn’t work that quick taking bodies into heaven.

He whirled and shot to his feet at the same time, shouting: “Marco!”

A wall of a person put themselves between Jean and that stretcher. It whizzed down the corridor, Marco’s head lolled to the side and his chest heaving, his brow twisted.

  
The tears rushed down, the fragile jar of Jean’s calm toppling off the edge due to the earthquake inside him, shattering everything he loved.

Jean shouted Marco’s name on every breath he had and didn’t have, trying to shove past. Someone pushed him back and restrained him.

“Jean, no!” Reiner boomed at him.

“MARCO!” Jean shouted. He’d go over, Reiner, if it got him to Marco. Jean leapt, throwing his arm at the shrinking stretcher, at Marco, as though it just took a few more centimeters to reach. “Marco!”

Reiner gripped him and set him down; Jean burst past and rushed after Marco, shouting, “Marco!”

Someone tackled him to the wall. It was the second time, yet it only took two to get real sick of people tackling him and put them on his hate list for life.

“Jean, stop! You can’t go back there!” Green- grey eyes glared him to the spot as hands and arms did. This person either shook to the point that Jean felt it, too, or Jean shook so much that he projected it onto other people—Jean cursed. 

Jean glared at Eren passed his shaking, passed his fear. “You get out of my way, Jaeger,” Jean said, pushing Eren back, back toward the other wall, “He’s going to-”

 Jean’s head snapped back as Eren headbutt him in the forehead. Jean saw white explode with stars, and before he could say anything his back hit the wall again and Eren was shouting in his face.

“I’m not going to let him die!” Eren shouted. “What did I tell you when I started working here?”

Jean groaned—that head butt complicated his ability to remember—but he thought back all those years, thought of Marco, felt his knees cave, and then remembered when he started as EMT and Eren an assistant doctor, because he refused to be called a nurse.

“You’re going to save them all,” Jean said, remembering a haughty, determined young Eren’s words. “But Eren-”

“He’s not going to die!” Eren snapped, forcing his opinion, as usual.

“Eren-”

“Say it!” Eren said, shaking him. “Say it, Jean!”

“He’s…” Jean’s eyes burned with tears. Armin came running, shouting for Eren. Eren remained in the spot, not going to move until Jean said it. Jean said, “I saw the burn, Eren, you-”

Eren snapped at him, “He’s not going to die! Say it!”

“He’s-”

“Eren, we need you, now!” Armin said.

“Say it, Jean!”

“He’s,” Jean took a deep breath, tears in his eyes, his shaking clearly his own, “He’s not going to die.”

Eren’s grip loosened on him. “He’s not going to die,” Eren said, eyes locked with Jean’s, determined as ever.

Jean bit his lip, and he nodded. Eren let him go and ran down the hall, shouting at his assistants to get him what he needed. When Jaeger disappeared, Jean faltered, pressing back against the wall and sinking down.

“Marco…” he said, the name nothing more than a whimper. “He’s not going to die,” he whispered, drawing his knees up to his chest. “He’s not going to die, he’s not going to die.”

Rocking himself, Jean repeated that into his knees, one hand in his hair, the other gripped in Marco’s jacket around him. Someone sat beside him and started caressing his back. Jean didn’t know who it was, nor did he feel their presence. All he could think, breathe or say was that he wasn’t going to die.

Marco wasn’t going to die.

And he believed it, passed the horrible pain in his chest.

…

 

The flames leapt out at him while Marco was trying to save a child. He’d always been slow moving, worked better as an assist rather than a lead, but he was the only one who heard him. If he hadn’t thrown himself into danger, the boy would’ve been burned. The smile on his father’s face as he embraced his unharmed son when Marco brought him out alive made it worth it.

Marco requested of a kind person at the scene drive him back to the station where he trashed his burned shirt and smeared burn cream sloppily over his wound, lying on the floor of the station, willing the pain away. Sasha came in on a hell wind and tore his ear off with worry, as did the others, but Marco just threw on a clean shirt, his jacket covered in soot, wiped his face a bit, and stumbled out of the station to his car, to see Jean. And, well, check himself in, by popular request.

And now here he was, lying in a hospital bed doped up on painkiller, his body stiff with bandages, rather than pain.

He sighed and stared out the window. He sure made a mess of things, but that was a nice view.

“Where is it?”

“Jean, you should calm down first-”

“I’m not going to calm down, to hell with calming down! Where the fuck is it?”

“It’s this one right—Jean!”

Marco turned to the door just as his boyfriend kicked it open, guns and eyes blazing. He stormed into the room, eyes pinning Marco to the bed, and all Bodt did was smile.

Jean whipped his finger at him, “You wipe that smile right off your face, Bodt,” Jean said, pacing the bedside. Marco watched him, amused and worried for the room’s safety rather than his own. “Do you know how worried I’ve been? How anxious? You scared the shit out of me, the literal shit, passing out in the middle of the hospital like that!” Jean whirled on him, slashing his hand through the air. “You’re not fire retardant, you’re not the Human Torch, you’re not fucking Superman!”

Marco smiled. “I was doing my job, Jean-”

“Well do your job a little safer, Marco, Jesus,” Jean snapped, running his hand through his hair. He sighed angrily at the wall, his shoulders heaving up and dropping the weight of the situation with the motion. Marco propped his body on his elbows, glad for the painkiller, because this might’ve hurt a lot worse if he was running off his own strength.

Jean wasn’t finished. He turned around and gave Marco a tearful, pained look.  

“I don’t want to lose you.”

Marco didn’t know if Jean knew the face Marco made whenever he said these next two words; it was always a soft smile, following his sigh. “Oh Jean,” Marco said, lying back.

He opened his arms to Jean, shifting as much as he could without jostling something. With a sigh Jean headed over and laid beside him, snaking his arms underneath Marco’s torso and setting his cheek on his chest. Even with the bandage, he could still feel Marco’s breathing, steady and slow.

Marco rubbed Jean’s back and his arm, relaxing on the bed, now that he held Jean. “Think of it this way,” Marco said. “After the burn heals, I can get a cool tattoo to cover it.”

Jean huffed. “Oh, is that what we’re after?” he asked.

“Then again, the scar might look pretty sick, too,” Marco said.

Jean scrunched up his face. “Very sick,” he said. He shifted closer to Marco, caressing his chest. Marco knew Jean knew if Marco had the energy to be a dork, Jean had the energy to sass him, and ultimately, he was going to be alright.

“The sickest,” Marco said, impersonating a hype man.

Jean puffed a laugh. “How long were you holding onto that one?”

“Well you were supposed to say ‘the sickest’ but you ruined it,” Marco said.

Jean rolled his eyes. “So it’s my fault your pun sucked ass?”

“We’re a team, Jean, in it to win it,” Marco said. “We’re all in this together.”

Jean scowled. “Not much longer if you keep patronizing the Disney Channel original movies.”

Marco had them all on DVD, mainly because it agitated Jean enough to get them in a compromising position and go do something more entertaining in the bedroom.

“I’m going to keep watching them Jean,” Marco said. “It’s my infamous mood kindler. Bet on it.”

“Your infamous mood killer,” Jean corrected. “Bet on it.”

“Bet on it?” Marco asked.

Jean sighed. “Bet on me,” he muttered. Marco kissed his head with a chuckle.

“I really was worried you know,” Jean said. “I was ready to kick your ass if you didn’t tell me where it was.”

Marco rubbed Jean’s back and arm. “I waited so long because I didn’t want you to worry,” he said. “I remembered how much that firefighter terrified you, so I waited.”

Worried was an understatement; Jean still had nightmares that it was Marco he rushed to the hospital, and not a stranger who looked like him. The fact that Marco considered Jean’s feelings both warmed his heart and broke it.

“You idiot,” Jean muttered, “I would’ve worried regardless.” He was always on edge, concerning Marco’s line of work. He feared the next body he’d drive to the hospital would be Marco’s, or that Jean would be the fire that Marco had to save next.

Marco kissed Jean’s head again, rubbing his back. “I’m always going to come home to you, Jean,” he said. “Even after I die, I’m gonna haunt the phone, remember.”

Oh Jean remembered. “Why the phone, other than to annoy me?” Jean said, though a smile found his face.

“So you can keep it,” Marco said. “It’s vintage. Classy.”

“It’s ugly,” Jean said.

“But you’d keep it if my soul was tied to it for eternity,” Marco said. Jean was about to say something, then Marco cut him off with: “Bet on it.”

Jean closed his eyes, smiling. “Bet on it.”

“Bet on it,” Marco repeated. “Bet on me!”

Jean shook his head. “You loved that way too much,” he said. Marco shrugged. He wasn’t going to deny it.

They fell into a comfortable silence, just lying there, in each other’s arms.

“I’m going back to my EMT job,” Jean said.

Marco stopped his hands. “Yeah?”

“Desk work is boring as shit,” Jean said. “And,” he would let Marco assume he inspired this, “if you can risk your life saving people, I can do everything I can to make sure people get to the help they need.”

Marco hummed, his hand on Jean’s tattoo, rubbing it gently. “So,” he said “I guess you could say. We can bet on you, huh?”

Laughing, Jean kissed Marco’s chest.

“Shut up, Superman,” he said.

“You love it.” Marco knew that his line of work was dangerous, and he wasn’t Superman. But he could save lives, save homes, and still be home in time to hug Jean to his chest as they slept. He just had to get a few scars along the way, and scars healed, and he was going to be okay as long as he could lie here, in Jean’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by me and theparanoidwriter's service cars AU~  
> There might be more of these. .3.


End file.
